You may have missed former "Hercules" and right-wing "Christian" extremist Kevin Sorbo's recent rants against African-Americans and Jewish people. One thing that caught my eye was his statement, regarding Jewish people who protested Mel Gibson's portrayal of Jews in "The Passion of the Christ": "News bulletin: you did kill Jesus!"
Now, aside from the blatantly abusive racism, what Sorbo claims is wrong. Historically and theologically, it's like saying that "Garfield" is directly responsible for climate change.
First, let's look at the historical landscape. I've always had a problem with the Gospel accounts claiming that the Jewish religious leaders couldn't kill Jesus because they had no law allowing execution (See John 18:31). If this is so, how was Stephen killed? The book of Acts says that members of the Sanhedrin (the same group which met to condemn Jesus) dragged Stephen outside of the city and stoned him.
Further, note that the standard method of execution in Jewish religious culture was stoning. Crucifixion, the method by which Jesus was killed, was a practice of the Romans (as well as other cultures).
"Crucifixion was often performed to terrorize and dissuade its
witnesses from perpetrating particularly heinous crimes. Victims were
left on display after death as warnings to others who might attempt
dissent. Crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was
particularly slow, painful (hence the term excruciating,
literally "out of crucifying"), gruesome, humiliating, and
public, using whatever means were most expedient for that goal.
Crucifixion methods varied considerably with location and time
period." (Source)
While many sources point to the Gospel accounts themselves as the source of anti-Jewish sentiment concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, I would contend that, while the view has some merit, it is more an issue of lazy scholarship, perpetuated through the millenia, which is more to blame.
The chief culprit in this seems to be the Gospel of John. The writer of John's Gospel throws around the phrase "the Jews" to describe enemies of Jesus, and it really does sound like he means all the Jews!
Setting aside the obvious argument that Jesus, the Apostles, and most (if not all) of those who accompanied Jesus in the Gospels were themselves Jewish (thus the enemy could not have been "all Jews"), there remains the issue of what purpose the Gospels (and specifically, the Gospel of John) were serving when they were written.
In his "Introduction to the Gospel of John," the late Raymond E. Brown makes an excellent case that the writer of John was speaking of, and to, a specific, limited group of people.
The Johannine believers "...faced charges that they were making Jesus equal to God and thus were introducing another God alongside the God of Israel (see 5:16–18); they were put on trial before the authorities and other opponents in the synagogue; they marshaled arguments from the Scriptures and the Jesus tradition to answer the authorities; they were expelled from synagogues and reacted in alienated hostility toward their former coreligionists (ch. 9)."
Thus "...there may have been a hope to reach and persuade one group of
Jews. Having been expelled from the synagogues for what they regarded
as the courage to stand up to the authorities and confess Jesus, the
Johannine Christians could not help being critical of those who
lacked that courage—those who believed in Jesus but did not confess
it publicly. It is not implausible that in the 80s and 90s such
Jewish crypto-Christians were undergoing a crisis as to whether to
stay on as part of synagogue Judaism or openly to join one of the
developing churches or communities."
In short, the Gospel of John (like every other book of the New Testament) was intended to impact a specific set of individuals for a specific purpose or purposes. There is no rational reason to think that the writers ever imagined they were penning the New Testament; rather, their message was for this church here or that group there. While this cannot excuse language that is uncomfortably racist in the Gospel of John, it shines a glaring light on those who magnify the language as a way to "prove" that the Jews were ultimately to blame for the death of Jesus.
Returning to the Romans, there seems to be an idea, hinted at (or blatantly promoted) in the Gospels and trumpeted in passion plays, that Pontius Pilate was a sympathetic character forced by overwhelming public outcry to crucify an innocent man. Many scholars have long had a problem with this idea, and with good reason.
Don Cupitt and Peter Armstrong write: "...we know a good deal more about Pilate form a variety of sources
outside the New Testament. It confirms what Gospel critics already
suspected from internal evidence, that Pilate was really a very hard
man who would unhesitatingly order the execute of a Galilean who
seemed to him sufficiently troublesome. The tragic myth of Pilate as
a decent fellow pushed into a terrible mistake has to go. It was
evolved by way of reconciling Christianity with the Roman State, but
it is not historical.” (Cambridge and BBC)
Candida Moss writes, "Why would the Gospel writers create such stories? There are a
variety of explanations. As Jews writing in the volatile aftermath of
the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, followers of
Jesus found themselves adrift. They may have been trying to avoid
attracting attention from the Romans. They may have been embroiled in
religious disputes with other Jews who rejected their claims about
Jesus. They may have been trying to “divorce Jesus from Judaism”
in order to win Roman converts. The fact that historians always
disagree is one reason they’ll never form a Justice League. But
whichever explanation we follow it is clear that neither the Gospel
writers nor Jesus intended to sow the seeds of anti-Semitism."
As is true of every area of Scripture, we are far better served when we search the Scriptures for what God says to us and our generation, rather than for evidence that "those people" are wrong.
So who did kill Jesus?
From a purely theological aspect, we all did. "'He himself bore our sins' in his body on the cross, so that
we might die to sins and live for righteousness; 'by his wounds you
have been healed.”' (1 Peter 2:24)
From a historical standpoint, Jesus was murdered by oppressive systems. The Jewish Temple system of the day was either in collusion with, or beholden to, the occupying forces of Rome. The Herods owed their power to Caesar as well.
In other words, religion and government were in cahoots. I leave it to the reader to draw the obvious parallels to modern American Christianity.
The saddest thing about all of this is not that some formerly hunky B-grade actor is saying things that are both stupid and incorrect. It's that Kevin Sorbo continues to have a platform for his ignorance, not because we like to point and laugh, but because he is (a) a little famous, and (b) far too many people agree with him.
And while I fully support anyone's right to be a blithering idiot, when Kevin Sorbo or anyone else says these things, he doesn't suffer for them. Instead, those who suffer are the Jewish people, African Americans, and others he insults.
This is not a Biblical principle. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor
free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
Jesus did not die so we could feel superior to others, Kevin.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Jesus Never Existed? Not so fast...
Recently, Fox commentator Alan Colmes and Huffington Post blogger Chris Sosa have posted (or in Sosa's case, referenced), an article on AlterNet.org, "5 Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed." Sosa, AlterNet writer Valerie Tarico, and perhaps Colmes are members of a small but vocal group of "Jesus Mythers," people who claim that Jesus never existed.
Now, at first glance, at least four of the five reasons make sense:
1. No first century secular evidence whatsover exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus' life, which become more crystallized in later texts.
3. Even the New Testament stories don't claim to be first-hand accounts.
4. The Gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
The last point, "Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons" is really not a reason to doubt Jesus' existence. Rather, we must question these scholars' agendas. But that is a task for another day.
I'd like to take a look at Ms.Tarico's recitation of the Myther's claims one by one:
To the first point, that there is no first century secular evidence supporting Jesus'existence: of course there isn't. Geographically, politically, and sociologically, there would be no discernible reason for anyone during the period of 4-6 BCE to 29-33 CE to have made note of Jesus.
First, the province of Judea was unimportant to the Roman Empire. Second, an itinerant rabbi with a few followers tramping around a relatively small part of that unimportant province would scarcely have attracted the attention of anyone influential enough to have had their writings preserved. Thirdly, there is the problem of the Temple. If (and it is a stretch) the Temple elite had written about Jesus at all, including correspondence, trial transcripts, or a receipt for Judas' thirty pieces of silver, those records disappeared when the Temple, and Jerusalem itself, was destroyed in 70 CE.
All that being said, there are three mentions of Jesus in late first- and early second-century secular sources. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, apparently makes brief reference to Jesus in two places. The first is Antiquities 20, 9, 1, and is disputed by very few scholars as original to Josephus: "...Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others…"
A longer passage, in Antiquities 18, is widely believed to have fallen victim to Christian interpolation and even forgery. Still, scholars widely agree that there was an authentic nucleus to that more disputed passage.
Then there's Tacitus, who was no fan of Christianity. Writing on the subject of the Great Fire of Rome, he wrote in his Annals, Book 15, chapter 44, "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."
Even Bart Ehrman, who Tarico and Sosa quote (out of his context), says, "Paul knew Jesus' brother, James, and he knew his closest disciple, Peter, and he tells us that he did, If Jesus didn't exist, you would think his brother would know about it, so I think Paul is probably pretty good evidence that Jesus at least existed,"
Paul brings us to Tarico's second point, that the earliest Christian writers didn't know the details of Jesus' life. In fact, she claims, "…he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings… The leaders of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly opposes them for not being true Christians!"
Interesting, isn't it, that if Paul thought so poorly of them, he would still defer to the Apostles. Oh, and Paul did refer to them as "apostles," as evidenced in this passage from his (almost universally accepted as genuine) letter to the church at Galatia (v. 17-20): "I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie." (emphasis added)
Later, when a dispute arises in Antioch concerning circumcision, it is Paul and Barnabas who come before the "Apostles and elders" in Jerusalem (See Acts 15).
Now, to the issue of Paul knowing bupkus about the life of Jesus, we don't know what he knew. The nine Epistles generally thought to be genuinely written by Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) are not meant to be historical treatises. Romans is concerned with theology, the letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians and Thessalonians are a mixture of theology and discussion of issues specific to those churches, and Philemon is an entity unto itself, at once delivering a slave to his master and begging for his life to be spared.
Since few, if any, of the other Epistles are thought to be written by the Apostles, I don't know which other "earliest Christian writers" Tarico refers to.
I'd like to look at Tarico's third and fourth points (that the Gospels don't claim to be eyewitness accounts, and anyway they contradict each other) together.
These are thorny issues, because (except for the Gospel of John, the single non-synoptic Gospel), it's true: none of the writers claim to have "been there." And yes, there are points (details, mostly) where the Gospels don't line up lockstep (and in the case of John, fly wildly off in another direction).
Who wrote the Gospels? We don't know, sorry. As for when, though, the likelihood is that all were completed before the end of the first century CE. I can only speak for myself in arguing for an early (mid- to late-first-century, the Synoptics prior to 70 CE) authorship, though many (generally more conservative) scholars would agree. I have spoken about this in sermons, and will be glad to recount them in a blog post if there is interest.
However, as it regards the existence of the person of Jesus, this "contradiction/authorship" argument simply doesn't hold up. Take, for example, one of the links Tarico provides to discredit the Gospels: in an effort to discredit the events of the Resurrection, "Father Dan" reveals that it is in the details, rather than the events, that most Gospels differ.
Someone came to the tomb on Sunday morning, either before or shortly after dawn. She or they found the tomb empty. The risen Jesus first appeared to someone, or to several someones.
Further, all four Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified. That in and of itself would be an astounding development if Jesus were simply a myth. Bart Ehrman says, "The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the enemies – and so if you're going to make up a messiah, you'd make up a powerful messiah, You wouldn't make up somebody who was humiliated, tortured and the killed by the enemies."
So, look: let's discuss Jesus' divinity, his miracles, his ministry, what if anything his death and resurrection mean for humankind. But if you want to suggest that Jesus never existed in the first place... as we say in the South, that dog won't hunt.
Additional Source
Now, at first glance, at least four of the five reasons make sense:
1. No first century secular evidence whatsover exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus' life, which become more crystallized in later texts.
3. Even the New Testament stories don't claim to be first-hand accounts.
4. The Gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
The last point, "Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons" is really not a reason to doubt Jesus' existence. Rather, we must question these scholars' agendas. But that is a task for another day.
I'd like to take a look at Ms.Tarico's recitation of the Myther's claims one by one:
To the first point, that there is no first century secular evidence supporting Jesus'existence: of course there isn't. Geographically, politically, and sociologically, there would be no discernible reason for anyone during the period of 4-6 BCE to 29-33 CE to have made note of Jesus.
First, the province of Judea was unimportant to the Roman Empire. Second, an itinerant rabbi with a few followers tramping around a relatively small part of that unimportant province would scarcely have attracted the attention of anyone influential enough to have had their writings preserved. Thirdly, there is the problem of the Temple. If (and it is a stretch) the Temple elite had written about Jesus at all, including correspondence, trial transcripts, or a receipt for Judas' thirty pieces of silver, those records disappeared when the Temple, and Jerusalem itself, was destroyed in 70 CE.
All that being said, there are three mentions of Jesus in late first- and early second-century secular sources. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, apparently makes brief reference to Jesus in two places. The first is Antiquities 20, 9, 1, and is disputed by very few scholars as original to Josephus: "...Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others…"
A longer passage, in Antiquities 18, is widely believed to have fallen victim to Christian interpolation and even forgery. Still, scholars widely agree that there was an authentic nucleus to that more disputed passage.
Then there's Tacitus, who was no fan of Christianity. Writing on the subject of the Great Fire of Rome, he wrote in his Annals, Book 15, chapter 44, "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."
Even Bart Ehrman, who Tarico and Sosa quote (out of his context), says, "Paul knew Jesus' brother, James, and he knew his closest disciple, Peter, and he tells us that he did, If Jesus didn't exist, you would think his brother would know about it, so I think Paul is probably pretty good evidence that Jesus at least existed,"
Paul brings us to Tarico's second point, that the earliest Christian writers didn't know the details of Jesus' life. In fact, she claims, "…he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings… The leaders of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly opposes them for not being true Christians!"
Interesting, isn't it, that if Paul thought so poorly of them, he would still defer to the Apostles. Oh, and Paul did refer to them as "apostles," as evidenced in this passage from his (almost universally accepted as genuine) letter to the church at Galatia (v. 17-20): "I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie." (emphasis added)
Later, when a dispute arises in Antioch concerning circumcision, it is Paul and Barnabas who come before the "Apostles and elders" in Jerusalem (See Acts 15).
Now, to the issue of Paul knowing bupkus about the life of Jesus, we don't know what he knew. The nine Epistles generally thought to be genuinely written by Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) are not meant to be historical treatises. Romans is concerned with theology, the letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians and Thessalonians are a mixture of theology and discussion of issues specific to those churches, and Philemon is an entity unto itself, at once delivering a slave to his master and begging for his life to be spared.
Since few, if any, of the other Epistles are thought to be written by the Apostles, I don't know which other "earliest Christian writers" Tarico refers to.
I'd like to look at Tarico's third and fourth points (that the Gospels don't claim to be eyewitness accounts, and anyway they contradict each other) together.
These are thorny issues, because (except for the Gospel of John, the single non-synoptic Gospel), it's true: none of the writers claim to have "been there." And yes, there are points (details, mostly) where the Gospels don't line up lockstep (and in the case of John, fly wildly off in another direction).
Who wrote the Gospels? We don't know, sorry. As for when, though, the likelihood is that all were completed before the end of the first century CE. I can only speak for myself in arguing for an early (mid- to late-first-century, the Synoptics prior to 70 CE) authorship, though many (generally more conservative) scholars would agree. I have spoken about this in sermons, and will be glad to recount them in a blog post if there is interest.
However, as it regards the existence of the person of Jesus, this "contradiction/authorship" argument simply doesn't hold up. Take, for example, one of the links Tarico provides to discredit the Gospels: in an effort to discredit the events of the Resurrection, "Father Dan" reveals that it is in the details, rather than the events, that most Gospels differ.
Someone came to the tomb on Sunday morning, either before or shortly after dawn. She or they found the tomb empty. The risen Jesus first appeared to someone, or to several someones.
Further, all four Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified. That in and of itself would be an astounding development if Jesus were simply a myth. Bart Ehrman says, "The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the enemies – and so if you're going to make up a messiah, you'd make up a powerful messiah, You wouldn't make up somebody who was humiliated, tortured and the killed by the enemies."
So, look: let's discuss Jesus' divinity, his miracles, his ministry, what if anything his death and resurrection mean for humankind. But if you want to suggest that Jesus never existed in the first place... as we say in the South, that dog won't hunt.
Additional Source
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Social Justice Christian and... abortion
It was a hot summer day in 1982, and I was sitting in Chip's apartment with some friends. There were, I think, six of us, all involved in a coffeehouse ministry at a local university, and we'd just finished helping Chip move in.
A little background: I was not-so freshly graduated from high school, and freshly dropped out of Bible College, and a licensed Southern Baptist minister. AIDS wasn't a story yet, gay people weren't on my radar. The issue du jour was abortion. If you weren't against it, Jesus didn't love you.
I don't recall the conversation, but Chip at some point was playing audio of Kenneth Copeland or Jimmy Swaggart praying in tongues, and he pulled out a couple of anti-abortion "parody" songs. This kind of "comedy," by the way, is rarely funny. If you want to hear it done occasionally well, listen to Weird Al Yankovic. If you want to hear it done poorly, and with meanness, listen to this site's podcasts, which feature a takeoff of "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Anyway, he played the songs, and all I can remember is that the chorus to one (with peppy, faux-jazz background music) was "Kill it!" referring, of course, to the unborn child.
One of the girls in our group caught my eye and motioned me outside.
This sixteen year old wept as she told me her story, and even at the young age of nineteen, I knew to keep my damn mouth shut and listen. Sherry, the child of an abusive, alcoholic father, had had an abortion when she was fourteen years old. She really hadn't had much choice. If her father had found out, he would have systematically beaten the child out of her, very likely killing Sherry in the process.
I think it is that story, and that young lady, that made me such a lousy Fundamentalist. Oh, I'm not saying I turned into a pro-choice Christian right then. I still didn't "believe in" abortion. I had the right bumper stickers on my car for years. I marched on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I did some pretty excellent videography for a fledgling TV show on an antiabortion segment. But in the back of my head, all those years, was Sherry.
Yet how could I be a Christian and not protest? Not condemn abortion? Not support pro-life groups, pro-life political candidates? Never mind that these groups did little to quell the tide of unwanted pregnancies. Never mind that the pro-life candidates did nothing to actually prevent abortions. And never mind that, to a person, each of these so-called pro-life candidates supported capital punishment (which I had never supported - but that's another blog post entirely).
Slowly, I began to notice this. It wasn't until about 2007 that it all finally clicked with me. At this point in my life, I was about two years into a spiritual transformation, leaving Fundamentalism behind and becoming what some have called "a garden-variety progressive," and others "ignorant and unteachable." Like my experience with Sherry, the catalyst had been meeting people who didn't fit into my predetermined boxes for how "those" people were: Gay folk. Transgender folk. Atheist folk. Alternative-religion folk.
I was sitting one afternoon in the office of a friend and mentor who was a small-church pastor. In the course of a conversation specifically about the troubling and divisive issue of abortion, she said that sometimes cut-and-dried, right-and-wrong choices simply do not exist. Not really.
And I thought about Sherry. Did she really have a choice? Would the "right" decision have been, as one Twitter follower suggested, to let her father kill the baby, rather than her doing it herself?
It's easy, I think, to be "against" something that doesn't directly affect you. I see it all the time; self-proclaimed "Defenders of the Faith" posting long, feverish blogs about the evils of this or that version of Christianity, entire churches dedicated to sending gay people to Hell, Message boards with members committed to telling one another they are on the right of what is good and pure.
Does a woman trapped in poverty, as 20% of Americans are, really have a choice? Does a woman who is the victim of rape have a choice? Does a child who has been molested have a choice? Does a woman faced with crippling illness or death if she carries a child to term have a choice?
I do not know the answer to these questions. My point is this: unless you are currently in any of those situations, you don't know the answer to the questions, either. To say otherwise, to claim you hold the perfect bit of doctrine for that particular slice of reality, is either Pharisaical hubris or downright idiocy. You don't. You can't.
Do you want to make abortion go away? Do you, really? Then pray - not in front of a clinic, but with a scared and lonely girl facing the kinds of non-choice Sherry faced. Talk - but not through a megaphone, holding a garish sign with a fractured fetus on it. Talk, instead, to people. Have dinner with abortion clinic workers. Buy a nurse a cup of coffee. Make friends with people. Have conversations.
I warn you, though, that something will happen to you. Something frightening and unfamiliar, something not at all in your control: you'll begin to see these men and women no longer as the shadowy specters of evil incarnate, all deaths-head grins and bloody lips, but as humans. People.
People made, just like you and I, in the image of God.
If you can still hate them, still treat them as a concept and not a person after that, then perhaps it is too late for us all.
A little background: I was not-so freshly graduated from high school, and freshly dropped out of Bible College, and a licensed Southern Baptist minister. AIDS wasn't a story yet, gay people weren't on my radar. The issue du jour was abortion. If you weren't against it, Jesus didn't love you.
I don't recall the conversation, but Chip at some point was playing audio of Kenneth Copeland or Jimmy Swaggart praying in tongues, and he pulled out a couple of anti-abortion "parody" songs. This kind of "comedy," by the way, is rarely funny. If you want to hear it done occasionally well, listen to Weird Al Yankovic. If you want to hear it done poorly, and with meanness, listen to this site's podcasts, which feature a takeoff of "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Anyway, he played the songs, and all I can remember is that the chorus to one (with peppy, faux-jazz background music) was "Kill it!" referring, of course, to the unborn child.
One of the girls in our group caught my eye and motioned me outside.
This sixteen year old wept as she told me her story, and even at the young age of nineteen, I knew to keep my damn mouth shut and listen. Sherry, the child of an abusive, alcoholic father, had had an abortion when she was fourteen years old. She really hadn't had much choice. If her father had found out, he would have systematically beaten the child out of her, very likely killing Sherry in the process.
I think it is that story, and that young lady, that made me such a lousy Fundamentalist. Oh, I'm not saying I turned into a pro-choice Christian right then. I still didn't "believe in" abortion. I had the right bumper stickers on my car for years. I marched on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I did some pretty excellent videography for a fledgling TV show on an antiabortion segment. But in the back of my head, all those years, was Sherry.
Yet how could I be a Christian and not protest? Not condemn abortion? Not support pro-life groups, pro-life political candidates? Never mind that these groups did little to quell the tide of unwanted pregnancies. Never mind that the pro-life candidates did nothing to actually prevent abortions. And never mind that, to a person, each of these so-called pro-life candidates supported capital punishment (which I had never supported - but that's another blog post entirely).
Slowly, I began to notice this. It wasn't until about 2007 that it all finally clicked with me. At this point in my life, I was about two years into a spiritual transformation, leaving Fundamentalism behind and becoming what some have called "a garden-variety progressive," and others "ignorant and unteachable." Like my experience with Sherry, the catalyst had been meeting people who didn't fit into my predetermined boxes for how "those" people were: Gay folk. Transgender folk. Atheist folk. Alternative-religion folk.
I was sitting one afternoon in the office of a friend and mentor who was a small-church pastor. In the course of a conversation specifically about the troubling and divisive issue of abortion, she said that sometimes cut-and-dried, right-and-wrong choices simply do not exist. Not really.
And I thought about Sherry. Did she really have a choice? Would the "right" decision have been, as one Twitter follower suggested, to let her father kill the baby, rather than her doing it herself?
It's easy, I think, to be "against" something that doesn't directly affect you. I see it all the time; self-proclaimed "Defenders of the Faith" posting long, feverish blogs about the evils of this or that version of Christianity, entire churches dedicated to sending gay people to Hell, Message boards with members committed to telling one another they are on the right of what is good and pure.
Does a woman trapped in poverty, as 20% of Americans are, really have a choice? Does a woman who is the victim of rape have a choice? Does a child who has been molested have a choice? Does a woman faced with crippling illness or death if she carries a child to term have a choice?
I do not know the answer to these questions. My point is this: unless you are currently in any of those situations, you don't know the answer to the questions, either. To say otherwise, to claim you hold the perfect bit of doctrine for that particular slice of reality, is either Pharisaical hubris or downright idiocy. You don't. You can't.
Do you want to make abortion go away? Do you, really? Then pray - not in front of a clinic, but with a scared and lonely girl facing the kinds of non-choice Sherry faced. Talk - but not through a megaphone, holding a garish sign with a fractured fetus on it. Talk, instead, to people. Have dinner with abortion clinic workers. Buy a nurse a cup of coffee. Make friends with people. Have conversations.
I warn you, though, that something will happen to you. Something frightening and unfamiliar, something not at all in your control: you'll begin to see these men and women no longer as the shadowy specters of evil incarnate, all deaths-head grins and bloody lips, but as humans. People.
People made, just like you and I, in the image of God.
If you can still hate them, still treat them as a concept and not a person after that, then perhaps it is too late for us all.
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